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Turkey shouldn’t threaten Europe over refugees: Greece

Sunday, 08 September 2019 1:18 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 08 September 2019 1:18 PM ]

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis addresses representatives of local chambers, unions, and administrations during the opening of the 84th Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, on September 7, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

Greece says Turkey should not try to pressure Europe in a bid to receive more support for a plan to resettle Syrian refugees in northern Syria.

“Mr. Erdogan (the Turkish president) must understand that he cannot threaten Greece and Europe in an attempt to secure more resources to handle the refugee (issue),” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told a news conference in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki on Sunday.

“Europe has given a lot of money, six billion euros in recent years, within the framework of an agreement between Europe and Turkey and which was mutually beneficial,” he said.

On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country might be forced to stop preventing the flow of refugees into Europe if the European Union (EU) and the United States did not act to provide Ankara with more support toward retaining them.

PressTV-Erdogan threatens to unleash refugee influx into Europe

Turkey's president says the country may be forced to stop preventing refugee flow into Europe if the European Union and the US do not act to provide the country with more support.

Erdogan said he would go ahead with a plan to resettle a million refugees in northern Syria, adding that his country had already spent 40 billion dollars hosting what he said was a population of four million refugees from Syria, which was plagued by militancy starting in 2011.

Europe has been the destination of hundreds of thousands of refugees from such crisis zones as Syria, including elsewhere in Asia and Africa, in recent years. Particularly when the crisis began in 2015, many of the refugees arrived in Greece — one of the nearest destinations in Europe — often via Turkey.

But, under a deal signed with the EU in March 2016, Turkey agreed to take back all the refugees who had used its territory to illegally reach European shores in return for a number of commitments from the EU, including financial aid, visa liberalization, and an acceleration in negotiations with the EU over Ankara’s membership in the bloc.

That deal was what Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, was referring to in his Sunday remarks.

Still, he said dialog was possible in the “spirit of goodwill” and at a European level with Turkey but that it would not happen while Greece was receiving “threats” and was being subjected to “bullying” behavior.

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